Bird Box: Remake? What? No!

Imagine, if you will, a sequel to the famed Friday the 13th films in which Jason doesn't actually have to chase his victims. He just shows up and the moment everyone sees him they zombie-walk over to him whispering something vague about their dead mother, call him beautiful and headbutt his machete until they collapse in a gory mess. Sounds a little bit shit doesn't it? Well let's take it further. In order to combat this phenomena his would be victims blindfold themselves whenever they go outside and not only can Jason himself not go inside houses, he can't actually harm you as long as you have your blindfold on. But he can jump up and down and make noises.

That would be my enormously uncharitable description of the film "Bird Box" starring Sandra Bullock as Malorie; a thirtysomething, unemployed artist with daddy issues and the spunk of an invisible truck driver rattling in her womb. After a visit to the doctor with her sister the effects of a mysterious global crisis involving mass, unexplained suicides washes up at her doorstep, resulting in the death of her sister, her joining up with a group of survivors and John Malkovich being mildly annoyed. 

It is suggested that various beings with the ability to take the form of your worst fear/dead relatives have practically taken over the world and the only way to defend yourself from them when outside is to don a blindfold and attempt to navigate roaring rivers in old rowboats with children in tow.  

First of all, it's a Netflix movie, so it looks like a glorified student film with the budget of half a shoestring and a Congolese slave child. Secondly it's written by Eric Heisserer (albeit based on a novel) who was responsible for the atrocity that was The Thing Prequel and the overrated snorefest that was "The Arrival." Thirdly, am I the only one who got flashbacks to "The Happening"? Seriously it does feel like someone watched that film and decided to try and remake it, but do it right this time. From the deadly entity manifesting itself as a living gust of wind to the hilarious suicides it provokes plus the verbatim use of the classic "WE'RE NOT ASSHOLES" line directly from "The Happening", this honestly did seem like a covert attempt at a remake. And apparently (having just looked it up) I wasn't the only person who thought so.

Outside of these elements the film follows a fairly typical post-apocalypse drama formula. Main character teams up with a rag-tag group of people, one of them is a cynical, selfish, loudmouthed arsehole (who invariably ends up being right later in the film), at some point they run out of food and have to go on a supply run that goes horribly (and in this case, hilariously) wrong. This film however decides to break up the cliche ridden backstory with glimpses into the future with Sandra Bullock guiding two largely personality bereft children down a river and their subsequent encounters. It's not boring by any stretch but it vacillates between passably standard and unbridled silliness.

One attempt at serious emotional drama here, a fat woman diving head first through an unopened window there. This film is like attending a funeral where every now and then a clown on a unicycle crashes the party and sets itself on fire in front of the guests. But then the funeral just continues on its original path as if nothing happened. If this film was indeed an attempt to remake "The Happening" then clearly they were unable to shed the aformentioned film's notoriety for unintentional humour through slapstick suicide. And quite frankly why would they want to? This stuff is classic.  

Is it all bad? Not necessarily. The performances are solid if occasionally cheesy (John Malkovich chews the scenery as usual) and it holds your attention well enough. The trouble is that whatever serious intention it may have had is scuppered by the unintentional hilarity of the death scenes and I think they probably should have played up the threat of the unblindfolded people who force others to gaze upon the creature a little bit more. Beyond that the story is predictable and there's really not enough real horror elements to satisfy the "28 Days Later" crowd. 

All in all, this is a silly film that tries to take itself seriously and fails for the most part. Recommended for drunken parties with your mates. But at that point you could just as easily watch "The Happening". It's shorter, funnier and has Mark Wahlberg going "What? No."

      

Godzilla II: King of the YAWNsters

I'll make this quick.

Whilst the original Godzilla film from 1954 was an allegory for the death and destruction inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the American A Bombs - something that was still very much fresh in people's memories at the time of production - the movies that followed were colourful, fun, prosthetic pro-wrestling with little human drama to speak of. 

Not that there was no human drama, but in the case of one of my favourites "Destroy All Monsters" a lot of that drama is relegated to men running around in ridiculous space suits chasing after alien nuns. 

And that's pretty much what you want out of human drama in a Godzilla movie. Make it interesting enough for it to drive the movie forward and for the audience to relate to what's going on. Just make sure there's a lot of people in costumes wrestling and boom, you've nailed it. It's a hard formula to fuck up. 

Well apparently not, because our American friends never really seem to get it right. The Roland Emmerich Godzilla film in 1998 mixed bloated "Independence Day" story-telling style with a monster that in no way resembled Godzilla and the 2014 film was so unmemorable that all the legacy it was able to spawn was in the form of a semi-regularly seen meme.  

So how does its sequel hold up?

It's been a long time since I saw the 2014 Godzilla film. In fact I think I only ever saw it in the cinema. I remember Godzilla's design being a marked improvement over the Emmerich travesty but story-wise it wasn't much better. There was a dreariness that one should never see in a Godzilla movie and it had a habit of cutting away from monster fights to focus on the uninteresting exploits of uninteresting human characters. 

Unfortunately the new film hasn't changed much in that regard. There are nice shots here and there punctuating the otherwise horrid visuals and some of the monster designs, particularly that of Mothra, are quite beautiful. It's just a pity you barely get to see them. 

Most of the film, particularly the fights themselves, are awash in a hazy bukkake of special effects only exacerbated by the fact that the studio clearly hired a man with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease to do the camera work. With all the rain, tornadoes, shaky cam and extreme close ups you'd be forgiven for thinking the movie was trying to induce the audience into some kind of seizure; which would have been welcome since all it did was induce sleep. I don't know who it was that decided that making absolutely sure the audience can't see a damn thing that's going on was the height of action movie-making but their vivisection should be livestreamed to every film school on the planet as an example of what happens when you ruin cinema as an art form. Action movie makers in the past didn't do this for the same reason people who run carnival haunted houses don't lock you in a dark room and beat you with hammers. There's a line between genuine thrills and genuine discomfort. 

Speaking of genuine discomfort, there's only one word I can use to accurately describe the human drama in the midst of the glorified video game cutscenes this film calls monster fights; pretentious. The moment Vera Farmiga's character willingly allowed Ghidorah to be unleashed on the world (up until this point its assumed she's doing the villain's bidding unwillingly) I knew exactly what her motivation was going to be. 

Right after Ghidorah is released she makes contact with Monarch (the kaiju management corporation that her husband is working with) and we are treated to what seems to be some kind of live edited lecture on how humans totally suck man cuz climate change man; because let's face it, screenwriters don't want to write movies nowadays, they want to write TED Talks, and they'll do it in the middle of Godzilla movies and we'll pay to see them like fucking suckers because our culture is based on masochism and Hollywood is the dominatrix cracking the whip of nostalgia. 

Godzilla on his way to give a TED Talk on Fat Acceptance in the Kaiju Workplace

    
Charles Dance's character, the former MI6 and British Army Colonel Alan Jonah, is relegated to a background character responsible primarily for providing a good line for the trailer (Long live the King) and it's a shame because despite his own motivations being largely the same he's far less pretentious about it all and probably would've made it more palatable as such. "Yeah, yeah, I don't like humanity, it sucks, no I don't care that's it's a three headed murder dragon, can get we get this done please? I have to attend a convention panel so I can watch David Benioff and D.B. Weiss grovel for forgiveness from a horde of angry GoT fans."

He's basically there to set up the sequel. And that's essentially what this is. A set up for a sequel. There's little of lasting value to this film and it will most likely be forgotten just like its predecessor.

Avoid like this film's cameraman avoids tripods.